By Tim Hochstrasser Henry VI stands out as the play in this triptych that most benefits from Barton's editing and clarifications. Characters and scenes are cut away in profusion to reveal a …
By Tim Hochstrasser Everyone involved in this production acted with commitment and a good sense of pace and projection within this intimate space, but the success of the whole remains fundam…
By Tim Hochstrasser While the emotional wattage did not burn as brightly as it might, and while we were never really made to feel fully uncomfortable with either issues or text as we should,…
By Tim Hochstrasser This is an intriguing and valuable revival with some very solid performances at its heart. I am not fully persuaded that this double-bill has earned a lasting niche in th…
By Tim Hochstrasser So for all the efforts of the actors to make their characters more rounded and sympathetic this play tells us more about the anger in the air after the events of 2008 tha…
By Tim Hochstrasser It is clear from the start that this play " which runs straight through for eighty minutes " is potentially a drama about coming-out and sexual initiation, and indeed it …
By Tim Hochstrasser All in all this is a revival very much deserving of support. You reward will be some genuinely fine ensemble acting and some neglected writing that you can explore again …
By Tim Hochstrasser This is a genial, quietly satisfying set of reflections on how hard rural life can be and how mostly distant it has always been from any kind of Arcadian idyll or vision …
By Tim Hochstrasser While there are more serious moments to be found in this play, especially focused on the opportunities for women in the new theatre of the 1660s, there is no point pressi…
By Tim Hochstrasser This is a fully compelling night at the theatre. You do not feel the time dragging and can only be impressed at the way the cast finds new meanings in material that we al…
By Tim Hochstrasser I willing to concede that I have may have missed a great deal, and certainly the mainly youngish audience loved it on press night; but to me this was ultimately a prepost…
By Tim Hochstrasser This is an unsettling rather than disturbing night at the theatre that raises more questions than it can readily answer, and part of trouble lies in the way those questio…
By Tim Hochstrasser There are many more layers both to this play and to this production that deserve further comment, but which lie beyond the reach of a relatively brief review. Suffice to …
By Tim Hochstrasser There is a long tradition of performance of classic Russian-language theatre in Ukraine that dates back to Stanislavski, and one of the great rewards of this current resi…
By Tim Hochstrasser We encounter rural Britain more frequently through soaps " Emmerdale and The Archers " than on the stage. This is a missed opportunity for writers and for this reason alo…
By Tim Hochstrasser Arthur Miller was born a hundred years ago. A centenary is about discovering work afresh if it is about anything and the King's Head deserve great credit for choosing to …
By Tim Hochstrasser One part of the mission of Above the Stag is to remind us of notable plays on gay themes that have not always received the attention they deserved, or whose continuing to…
By Tim Hochstrasser This play can be seen as a saucy romp or as something rather more unexpectedly melancholy than that; but either way it is a thoroughly absorbing evening, and you really …
By Tim Hochstrasser While this is a deserved revival of an intriguing show, the core material remains in some respects unsatisfactory, and the scale of the show is not a great fit with the l…
By Tim Hochstrasser And so to the culmination of the contemporary opera section of the Grimeborn Festival, a double-bill in the form of Peter Maxwell Davies' The Medium and The Wanton Sublim…
By Tim Hochstrasser It is very rare that a company integrates a new concept so thoroughly into a Shakespeare play " too often it is merely gestural " but here the level of attention to detai…
By Tim Hochstrasser The play triumphantly uncovers and re-asserts McQueen's credo that design is at its best an act of love of the person " a summing up of who that man or woman was, is and …
By Tim Hochstrasser If this performance did not clear all of the hurdles set by Shakespeare and the play's daunting production history, it cannot be faulted on ambition and daring. The compa…
By Tim Hochstrasser Not everything in Grimeborn can work and while the commitment of all concerned deserves recognition, this adaptation cannot be considered wholly successful. As a better t…
By Tim Hochstrasser After Monty Python and Blackadder it is not really possible to present this type of opera in full cross-gartered fustian without an ironic angle; so much better in many w…